The animation, based on data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, charts nitrogen dioxide, a noxious gas produced primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, over China from Dec. 20 to March 16.

“The drop in concentrations in late January is visible, coinciding with the nationwide quarantine,” the agency reports, “and from the beginning of March, the nitrogen dioxide levels have begun to increase.”

ESA mission manager Claus Zehner estimates NO2 dropped about 40 percent during the lockdown. NO2 reacts with other chemicals in the air to form particulate matter, and ESA also documented a drop in particulate matter over China:

“By combining satellite observations with detailed computer models of the atmosphere, their studies indicated a reduction of around 20-30 percent in surface particulate matter over large parts of China,” the agency reported Friday.

Both NO2 and particulate matter have been linked to heart and lung disease. Both the EPA and the World Health Organization have identified fine particulate matter, PM2.5, as the leading cause of death from air pollution.

Air pollution causes an estimated 1.1 million deaths per year in China and costs the Chinese economy $38 billion. Earlier this month Stanford Earth Sciences Professor Marshall Burke projected that two months of coronavirus lockdown had saved the lives of 77,000 Chinese children and elderly from air pollution alone.

Worldwide, air pollution kills an estimated 7 million people annually, including about 100,ooo Americans.

Air pollution may also affect the mortality rate of COVID-19. Early analyses have identified hypertension as the leading simultaneous chronic disease (comorbidity) in patients who have died from COVID-19. Studies have linked air pollution, particularly NO2, to hypertension.

Both pollutants are known to impair lung function.

“Breathing air with a high concentration of NO2 can irritate airways in the human respiratory system,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Such exposures over short periods can aggravate respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, leading to respiratory symptoms (such as coughing, wheezing or difficulty breathing), hospital admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Longer exposures to elevated concentrations of NO2 may contribute to the development of asthma and potentially increase susceptibility to respiratory infections.”

NO2 is not a greenhouse gas, but greenhouse gases likely have seen a similar drop as lockdowns across the world shutter factories and reduce automobile traffic.

“As nitrogen dioxide is primarily produced by traffic and factories, it is a first-level indicator of industrial activity worldwide,” said Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes.

The Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite monitors air pollution by measuring a multitude of trace gases and aerosols. Last week the ESA released video of a pollution decline over northern Italy as that country entered lockdown:

Professor Eric Wolanski and Dr Severine Chokroun from James Cook University in Australia are physical oceanographers, researching the distribution, circulation, and physical properties of water.

In a new scientific paper, they argue that the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea are in even more serious trouble than first believed.

“The Spratlys are the sites of a military build-up and gross overfishing, mainly by China. Reefs and islands have been destroyed to construct military outposts to further territorial claims,” said Professor Wolanski.

He said it was already known that dredging to construct the new islands had damaged the environment and the region was massively overfished. There are typically 100-150 Chinese fishing boats working every reef that China controls, compared to between 0.1 and 0.5 fishing boats per reef in the Great Barrier Reef.

“We looked at the flows of fish and coral larvae from damaged reefs that produce, or used to produce, larvae and which reefs received them and are now deprived of them.”

The scientists determined the currents around the islands by using satellite data and then modelled the movement of larvae from and to every reef in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

“Reefs degraded or killed by island-building and overfishing produce less fish and coral larvae for those downstream. The levels vary, but in the most extreme case — Namyit Island — there are no more new coral and fish larvae getting through, due to all its sources of larvae being destroyed,” said Professor Wolanski.

He said China does not provide scientists with access to the reefs it occupies, neither does it provide data on the health of coral and fish populations at these reefs. But it now appears that the ecosystem of the whole Spratly Islands archipelago is at risk of collapse or severe degradation.

“We’ve pinpointed a priority list of reefs for vital conservation measures in the Spratly Islands archipelago. We recognise the political difficulties, but we have defined the problem and we have the solution based on the example of the developing collaboration between the Philippines and Vietnam that manages some reefs in the archipelago.

“We hope it’s not just wishful thinking that action will follow,” said Professor Wolanski.

The coronavirus outbreak has led China to quarantine more than 50 million of its people — the population of California, Oregon and Washington put together. After the SARS crisis, Chinese scientists called for the closing of these markets. The government ignored them.

China spends enormous sums on prestige-oriented biotech research and very little on the public health services needed to prevent and combat these contagions, according to The Wall Street Journal. Another example was the Chinese government’s cheapskate response to the African swine flu, which led to the death of nearly half the country’s hogs.

The greatest threat to the planet is global warming. China has been sabotaging international efforts to stop the burning of coal — the dirtiest of the fossil fuels in releasing greenhouse gases. China uses about as much coal as the rest of the world put together.

Higher temperatures undoubtedly helped fuel the cataclysmic fires in Australia. The disaster shocked the country, killing at least 1 billion kangaroos, koalas and other animals. At the same time, Australia is a major coal producer and exports the fossil fuel throughout Asia, China included.

Apart from coal’s huge role in climate change, it emits the nasty smog that preys on people living near the plants. This is the old-fashioned pollution that causes asthma, cancer, dementia and heart disease, and contaminates local water supplies.

Air pollution is linked to an estimated 1.6 million premature deaths per year in China (and over 2 million in India). You see China’s people wearing face masks under the darkened skies and wonder why there isn’t rioting in the streets — despite the government’s iron-fist control of the citizenry.

While most of the Western world is rapidly closing down coal plants, China is building more coal-burning capacity than the rest of the world combined. As China’s economy slows down, it is reopening some coal mines. Premier Li Keqiang is now actually pushing for more coal-fired power.

China’s new coal plants are popping up far beyond Asia, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example. The air quality in its capital, Sarajevo, is so foul that the Swedish embassy there said it is “in a category of its own.” The Western Balkans are already saddled with 16 communist-era coal power plants that have been tied to 3,900 deaths across Europe every year.

The Chinese government is actually funding these new coal projects. The outrage was such that locals recently launched rallies across Bosnia-Herzegovina to protest their government’s complicity in the pollution problem.

It is not my intention to blame all the world’s environmental ills on China. China is by far the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide gases, but the United States is well ahead of the 1.4 billion-person country on per capita emissions. But we and other Western countries have at least been reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and China’s keep growing.

China is big on producing solar panels, and the International Energy Agency projects that by 2024 it will account for 40 percent of the global growth in renewable energy. But irony of ironies, China’s densely polluted air is reportedly preventing solar rays from reaching its solar panels.

China is now an economic superpower. With that comes the obligation to pass up some business for the good of everyone. A proud country should not want the label of environmental pariah.

Since 1965, no country has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the United States. The 264 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the U.S. has emitted to the atmosphere represented 22.5% of global emissions during that time, and was well ahead of the cumulative 216 billion metric tons from the European Union (EU). In second place among countries was the 188 billion metric tons emitted by China.

But as China has industrialized — with a heavy reliance on coal-fired power — Chinese emissions have rocketed past both those of the U.S. and the EU:

China’s emissions passed those of the U.S. in 2005, and by 2012 had surpassed the combined contribution of both the U.S. and the EU. Should recent trends continue, China will be responsible for the most atmospheric carbon dioxide in less than 20 years.

China has lots of regional company, t00. The Asia Pacific region is home to both China and India — the world’s two most populous countries and two of the largest carbon dioxide emitters. It is also home to other fast-growing and/or populous countries, like Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Japan. Over the past decade, this region’s carbon dioxide emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 3.1%, which was nearly triple the global average. As a result, Asia Pacific is now responsible for nearly 50% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Thus, Asia Pacific as a whole continues to drive global carbon dioxide emissions higher:

There are some positives in the data. Over the past decade, the U.S. has decreased annual carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 800 million tons. This is by far the most of any country in the world, and is primarily a result of shifting coal-fired power to natural gas and renewables. The EU has also made significant strides, reducing its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 681 million tons.

These reductions paled in comparison to China’s two billion ton per year increase in emissions, but China’s emissions have been relatively flat since 2013. This, combined with the decreases in the U.S. and EU, have helped slow the growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade versus the previous decade:

It is true that the U.S. has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country, and that U.S. per capita emissions are among the highest in the world. But it is also true that the U.S. won’t solve this problem alone.

Regardless of the actions taken by developed countries, the primary driver of carbon dioxide emissions in coming decades will be areas of the world with huge populations, but with low, and growing per capita emissions. A small increase in those per capita emissions can result in a huge increase in overall emissions — amply demonstrated by Asia Pacific’s skyrocketing emissions.

Thus, the most pressing need in the world today is to ensure that countries can develop without a heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, because this is the reason for the status quo.

The Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) found widespread use of CFC-11 in China, even though the chemical was fully banned back in 2010.

Scientists have been extremely puzzled by the mysterious rise in emissions.

But this report suggests the key source is China’s home construction industry.

Just two months ago, researchers published a study showing that the expected decline in the use of CFC-11 after it was completely banned eight years ago had slowed to a crawl.

There were suspicions among researchers that new supplies were being made somewhere in East Asia.

Rumours were rife as to the source. There was a concern among some experts that the chemical was being used to secretly enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

The reality it seems is more about insulation than proliferation.

CFC-11 makes a very efficient “blowing agent” for polyurethane foam, helping it to expand into rigid thermal insulation that’s used in houses to cut energy bills and reduce carbon emissions.

Researchers from the EIA, a green campaign group, contacted foam manufacturing factories in 10 different provinces across China. From their detailed discussions with executives in 18 companies, the investigators concluded that the chemical is used in the majority of the polyurethane insulation the firms produce.

One seller of CFC-11 estimated that 70% of China’s domestic sales used the illegal gas. The reason is quite simple – CFC-11 is better quality and much cheaper than the alternatives.

The authorities have banned CFC-11 but enforcement of the regulation is poor.

“We were absolutely gobsmacked to find that companies very openly confirmed using CFC-11 while acknowledging it was illegal,” Avipsa Mahapatra from EIA told BBC News.

“The fact that they were so blasé about it, the fact that they told us very openly how pervasive it is in the market, these were shocking findings for us.”

The EIA says that its estimates of the amount of the gas being used in China are in the middle of the emissions range calculated by scientists in their report in May.

The scientist who first highlighted the problem with CFC-11 said the EIA findings seemed plausible, although it was difficult to be definitive.

Dr Stephen Montzka from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) told BBC News: “The pervasiveness of the use of CFC-11 that seems apparent in China based on their survey is quite amazing, although it is hard for me to assess the accuracy of the emission estimate they make to know if it is indeed likely that this activity can explain all or most of what we are observing in the global atmosphere.”

So why is this important?

This is a big deal because of the amount of the dodgy chemical being used and its potential to reverse the healing that’s starting to take place in the ozone layer.

China’s polyurethane foam makes up about one-third of global production, so if they are predominantly using an ozone-depleting substance it will set back the closing of the ozone hole by a decade or more.

As well as the ozone layer, CFC-11 has a warming impact. Researchers estimate that if the use of the chemical continues, it would be the equivalent of CO₂ from 16 coal-fired power stations every year!

What can be done about this?

As China is a signatory of the Montreal Protocol that governs the use of ozone-depleting substances, it should be possible to put trade sanctions in place. However, since the protocol was signed in 1987, this weapon of last resort has never been used and it’s not expected in this case.

What’s more likely is that China will be encouraged to crack down on the production of CFC-11s and to launch a full-scale investigation with the support of the Montreal Protocol secretariat.

“It is critical for the government of China not to treat these as isolated incidents,” said Avipsa Mahapatra from the EIA.

“We want them to clamp down but it’s supremely important for them to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the sector. It has to result in seizures, it has to result in arrests so that people know there are harsh penalties for the production of CFC-11.”

Delegates to the Montreal Protocol are meeting this week in Vienna and they will try to come up with a plan to tackle the issue.

What is the ozone layer and why is it important?

Ozone is formed in the stratosphere some 15 to 30km above the surface of the Earth by the interaction of solar ultraviolet radiation with oxygen in the air. In this location, the newly formed ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation, preventing most of it from reaching the ground. This is important because ultraviolet radiation can lead to skin cancer and eye damage in humans, can damage crops and marine life.

How did the hole in ozone layer came about?

Scientists discovered in 1985, much to their surprise, that there was a 30% drop in ozone levels over Antarctica in October of that year. By 1992, the hole was as large as North America.

What was happening was that chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons contained in refrigeration, air conditioning, packaging, insulation, solvents, and aerosol propellants were releasing chlorine or bromine molecules when they were exposed to intense UV light in the stratosphere.

When chlorine and bromine atoms come into contact with ozone, they destroy the molecules. One chlorine atom can destroy over 100,000 ozone molecules before it is removed from the stratosphere. Ozone can be destroyed more quickly than it is naturally created.

So what did the world do about this?

For once, the world acted speedily and to good effect. Most nations, including the chemical industry, signed up to the Montreal Protocol which quickly banned most of the worst-offending chemicals. Developing countries were given much longer to replace the gases. So while most of the richer countries got rid of CFC-11 in the mid-1990s, China and others were expected to completely get rid of it in 2010. That obviously hasn’t happened just yet.

I thought the ozone hole was recovering?

Back in 2014 researchers reported the first signs of a thickening in the ozone layer. At that point they said it would take a decade for the hole to start to shrink but by September 2015 scientists found that the hole was approximately 4 million sq km smaller than it was in the year 2000 – that’s an area the size of India.

All this was due to the global phase out of CFCs. So it was a major surprise to ozone experts to find that the expected decline in these elements in the air had stalled. And now, according to the EIA, the reason behind the slowdown has been discovered – and it’s mainly down to Chinese builders!